European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Deben and Baroness Finlay of Llandaff

Committee: 8th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 19th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben]

I bring the Committee back to the fact that this is a Bill about withdrawal, so we might ask why this amendment has been tabled. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Warner, how important the amendment is because of the Government’s commitment. The Government said that they were taking into British law all that was in European law. This amendment draws attention to the fact that the Government are not doing what they said they would: they are not taking into British law the protocols and those things that surround European law to which one can refer in a court case. We have been precise in what we have taken in and the Government have been precise in what they have excluded.

I speak in favour of the amendment because there is no reason why the Government cannot accept it. It is not possible to say that this is all a matter of negotiation—we are not going to negotiate this. Before my noble friend Lord Duncan spoke on the amendment before last, he gently upbraided me for suggesting that I knew how he was going to reply, and of course he did reply that it was not possible to commit the Government to the protection of medical devices because that was going to be part of the negotiation. However, there will not be a negotiation as to whether we will uphold the highest standards of public health; that will not be part of the negotiation at all. What is true is that the protection that, as a member of the European Union, we now have under European law would no longer be afforded to us were we to leave the European Union. Therefore, this amendment is merely to ensure that the withdrawal Bill does what the Government said that they wanted to do, which is to take into British law all those things that at the moment are in European law. This is an important amendment, because it helps to complete what, unfortunately, the Government left out from what they said that they would achieve.

There is a second reason why the amendment is so important. I am fortunate to be the chairman of the Committee on Climate Change. One of the things that is important to us is that we have a statutory position. When the carbon budgets, which we prepare, are passed into law by both Houses of Parliament, they cannot be changed thereafter without the Committee on Climate Change saying that that is right and proper. That is how we in Britain have made sure that we do not go back on our climate change commitments.

For most of our laws, we do not have that kind of protection, but we did and do have it because of our membership of the European Union. That is the kind of change that we will have to make if we leave the European Union to make sure that the public are as well protected after so sad an occasion as they were before. It is not me saying that but my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Defra, who is not known for his enthusiasm for the European Union. He has made it clear that we need to protect the people of Britain post Brexit by having very clear rules which give independent enforcement of environment law. He said we cannot have a system whereby environment law is affected by the whims—or sensible policies—of Ministers. He said we have to have something independent and has promised that he will present it to the Houses of Parliament. If that is true about environmental law, is it not also true about public health law? Do we not need precisely the same protection for public health that we clearly need to replace the protection we have in the European Union on the environment?

I shall listen extremely carefully to my noble friend’s answer, but I do not think that we can now say that the reason this is not acceptable is because of negotiation, nor do I think the Government can really say that they do not believe that this is what their policy is. This is, after all, only a statement of what the Government have said they believe—so why can we not put it on the face of the Bill, continue the protection which the British people have in the European Union, so that if we leave we at least make sure that public health is as protected afterwards as it was before?

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Deben, has pointed out, this is about moving into our law the regulations that currently protect us. That is why it seems appropriate in this Bill. I remind the Committee that the implications of Brexit for our health were published in the Lancet in a review in November last year, which detailed the areas that are in jeopardy. A fortnight ago, the Guardian reported a leaked document highlighting an unprecedented, co-ordinated effort by transatlantic right-wing think tanks to secure what they described as the “ideal” trade arrangement between Britain and the USA, which would involve the UK diluting its existing standards on food safety. I remind the House that the excessive use of antibiotics has resulted in superbugs, which is precisely why we have been worried about diluting any food safety standards. Working conditions in the farming areas that want to export to us are troubling. This would tear up the precautionary principle, whereby companies have to prove their product is safe before it can be sold, rather than waiting for it to be proven unsafe before it is recalled. That precautionary principle and the principle of safety run right through everything. As my noble friend Lord Patel outlined, and as previously discussed in Amendment 30, this relates to all of the infective areas, but it also covers toxic substances and the way that we handle those.

I strongly support this amendment because it would build up the health protections that we have built up slowly since we entered the European Union. It would simply guarantee the continuity of the present conditions and ensure that Articles 9, 11 and 168(1) of the Lisbon treaty are actually respected. It would require European institutions to maintain high levels of human health in all their policies and activities and would mean that these are then mirrored in the UK. It would of course affect areas of shared competence, such as environmental law, health and safety law, and public health law, as well as trade law. By mainstreaming this, it would build on precedents in UK law such as in Section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act, Section 149 of the Equality Act and Section 3 of the Human Rights Act. It covers acts of all public authorities, as I understand it. Judicial acts taken in interpreting retained EU law would then be subject to the same standards that we are used to and have become accustomed to. It covers the whole of the UK, irrespective of whether legislation is made or adopted in Westminster, Belfast, Cardiff or Edinburgh. I cannot see a reason not to accept it. It would maintain the standard to which we have become used. We are all aware of the dangers of dropping that standard.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Deben and Baroness Finlay of Llandaff

Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 12th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I am a signatory to two of the amendments in the name of my noble and learned friend Lord Hope of Craighead. I should declare first that I am a member of the Bevan commission, which has been quoted, and I should also say that funding for Wales has indeed been a concern over time.

To return to these amendments and the core issue of trust, a wise saying comes to mind: trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback. It seems as if we have had a few galloping horses through the Chamber this evening, but we have to move forwards. In the new world we will face after Brexit, which will not be easy—no one is now pretending that it will be—we need to be a United Kingdom and we need to pull together. Given the Minister’s remarks in response to the previous group of amendments—he indicated that he sincerely wants to bring the parties together to restore trust and find a resolution that helps us to move forward—I hope he will be able to work with others to achieve that, and that he will give serious consideration to these amendments. They have not been tabled to divide; rather they seek to establish a degree of reconciliation, restore trust and find a working way forward.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I wonder if I can be my usual emollient self at this point. I admit to being of Welsh extraction with a Welsh-speaking father. My noble friend Lord Forsyth spoke entirely from the point of view of someone who has been bruised—I would be on his side in this—by the activities, and sometimes more than that, of the Scottish nationalists. But the debate here is not about vetoes, although the amendment would confer them; rather it is a debate about trust. My noble friend says we can all work it out: this Government, the coalition Government and the Labour Government continued the utterly unfair system of the Barnett formula, which has done such damage to Wales, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, said, the Labour Government retained large sums of money, rather than pass it on in the system we previously had.

My noble friend knows very well that I believe in a single market. I do not have a view that narrows that single market to the United Kingdom. I look to a single market that continues through the whole of Europe, which is, of course, of great benefit to all of us and I am sad that he should try to remove us from it. But I do not think that it helps in this debate not to face the very considerable lack of trust in both Scotland and Wales, where there is a history of not getting a fair share except almost by force.

Scotland has managed to get itself into what many of us feel is the opposite position. That is how the Barnett formula works. It would be good for the Government of Scotland occasionally to recognise into what a favourable position history has put it. However, I should not like the Committee to fail to recognise, because of the way these amendments are drawn and have been put together, the specific position of Wales, not least because of the special position in which the north of Ireland has managed to get itself, for political reasons, and the historical position Scotland has been in. This is not to sow discord between the parts of the United Kingdom; it is merely to say to my noble friend the Minister, for whom I have enormous respect—his last speech summing up was an exemplary one to show how the Government can deal with issues in a way that at least makes the Committee feel that it is listened to; I thank him for that, because it was a very different touch—that there is a real feeling among people in Wales that the history does not help people believe that the United Kingdom Government will be entirely even-handed on this issue. Therefore, if, in the withdrawal Bill, Wales has its membership of the European Union, from which it has benefited very significantly, taken away, is there a way the Government can at least give greater confidence to Wales? If they do not, I fear the ability to come to a compromise will be made very considerably more difficult.

I feel my noble friend Lord Forsyth was partisan in the way he concentrated only on Scotland. He was kind enough to say that he did not know about Wales, but I do, so in these circumstances, will the Minister please give us a little more confidence? I should very much like my noble friend, whose own name reminds us of Aberystwyth, to give us a feeling that Government will, in some way, find a manner to give confidence in the Bill, since this is not appropriate.